Product Description

Aishiteruze Baby is a shojo series that revolves around the life of Kippei Katakura, a popular high-school playboy who suddenly finds himself the surrogate parent of his 5-year-old cousin, Yuzuyu Sakashita, when her mother disappears.

Kippei has a lot to figure out, like what to make for Yuzuyu's lunch and how to drop her off at kindergarten while still getting to high school on time. Kippei is enjoying his time with Yuzuyu, but not everyone is happy about it. The girls at school miss their quality time with Kippei, and one decides to play dirty to get him back.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #520516 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

kawaiii!!
this was a great story! and according to the back of the book, is the story 'the anklet' from the arabian nights. i thought it was very well told. i didn't really like the pictures though. they kind of look like figures posing instead of characters in the story, and there are noticable outlines around the people so as to make you think they're cut outs, or are not a part of the scenery they're presented in. the over posy-ness and the not fitting into the background kind of reminds me of cheesy picture books i read from the 80's. now these pictures aren't as bad as those, but the way they are presented are reminiscent of that... style. for this reason i didn't give it a 5, but i still like the book and think it's worth reading as the storytelling was well done.

The Sting of Fatherhood....in the Shoujo manner
This manga series and the anime that followed did a very good job of pulling you in. It follows a womanizing high school student named Kippei who was forced into taking care of his cute little baby cousin Yuzuyu as Yuzuyu's mother, (Aunt Miyako) left Yuzu to her sister (Kippei's mother).
One day after school, Kippei is suddenly tasked by the family breadwinner his sister Reiko to take care of little Yuzu. He doesn't shy from his duties, and Yuzu quickly becomes attached to Kippei. Through will, trial and error, he gives up a lot to make sure Yuzu's living in a loving home. Kippei makes mistakes but not overtly huge and when he notices it he usually scrambles to cheer her up. Yuzu, while in pre-school/kindergarten, learns her own life-lessons, and you see how cruel or compassionate kids can be all over again as if you were right beside her and you find yourself rooting for cast at various moments. As the viewer, you get pulled into the drama seeing Yuzu and her aunt's family (mainly Kippei on a daily basis) take care of her.
It's heartwarming and amazingly captures the spirit of raising a child, and witnessing their growing curiousity. As my title stated, yes, it does give you the sting of single parenthood. Don't get me wrong there is a lot of humor, as Kippei tends to be the butt of the jokes, from his womanizing (more like passed around by the girls) and school skipping reputation. Or reputation that he already is a single parent. Then there's Kokoro, a girl who starts off as someone who wants nothing to do with Kippei, but as someone who lives alone and having had her mother die at around Yuzu's age, she begins to gradually respect Kippei after seeing him give his all for Yuzu.
I'm so tired of seeing pointlessly cute/cool-looking/unrequited love/harem/ultra-violent for shock factor in manga and anime that it was refreshing to finally read a down to earth manga about family, especially one as good as this. This manga is well worth it, just because of little Yuzu is a bundle of cuteness. Sorry, can't help myself, did I mention Yuzu's cute? This hit me personally as I had to babysit my cousin a couple times as her parents weren't married, and it just gave me flashbacks, though I can't completely compare as Kippei was the daily guardian. Oh, and you can use this to introduce to people like your mom, or *gasp* girl to get her to try out manga (it is a Shoujo manga afterall).

Okay...
I first saw the anime, which I loved, via fansubs (I hope it gets licensed) so I asked my for and received the first three volumes of this series for my birthday. It's okay... but I thought that the anime was much better. This manga has gorgeous, adorable art, but aside from that it feels a bit rushed and the characterization is kind of shallow compared to the anime. This manga is cute, but the anime even pulls off cuteness more convincingly... it's hard to describe (and kind of strange sincew this manga spawned the anime). ^^;; I would recommend the anime in a heartbeat, but I just don't care for the manga version. There's much better shoujo manga out there. Two excellent titles that I recommend are Ouran High School Host Club and W Juliet. Even though it's not shoujo, I still must recommend Fullmetal Alchemist! XD